


Out of Place

by Iamnamedsilence



Series: The Sickness of Spark [8]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/F, Femslash February, Friends to Girlfriends, Friends to Lovers, Planning Adventures, or rather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22618198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamnamedsilence/pseuds/Iamnamedsilence
Summary: Sari meets her first real human friend when she is in college. The girl is a misfit too, loud, adventurous, disregarding the rules that try to make her into a quiet and obedient daughter of Japanese middle-class patents. She likes loud music and bright colors and Sari, quieter, more focused, is overwhelmed at first, but soon she discovered, how much in common Miko and her have. It’s a little as if they missed each other for the last years and had now found each other to make them complete. They just fit and Sari’s insight balances Miko’s fearlessness, and they both have dreams, oh, so many dreams they share! Their dreams of meeting aliens and have space adventures are so much similar is astonishing, so they end spending lots of time creating stories just for themselves. Somehow they never stopped to believe this is within their reach and sometimes they discuss those scenarios not as fantasies, but as real plans.Or, two queer girls of color and their plans.
Relationships: Miko Nakadai/Sari Sumdac
Series: The Sickness of Spark [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1454044
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Out of Place

**Author's Note:**

> A little warning: this contains spoilers for Loyalties.

Sari remembers sitting in her dad's lab. This is before everything and Sari is a child fascinated with robotics and artificial intelligence, just as her dad is. She is twelve and children her age are boring. She learns how to program her robotic dog and her dad smiles, proud. She knows that she is smart and she knows that she is different. She is not the real daughter of professor Sumdac, she is adopted and she has no idea, who her real parents were, but she loves her dad, even when she learns later how unconventional his approach to a child is, that he is more interested in his daughter developing her intelligence and skills than in her having more contact with other children. Sari grows up as an outsider: an extraordinarily smart girl of color in the USA. Her father might be a skilled engineer and programmist who works with the best and pushes the development of robotics and AI farther – but he still is of Asian origin and has to fight both his lack of social skills and other men, who happened to be born in the white middle class. His daughter has a hard time to adapt, and that her interests are different than those of other kids her age doesn’t help at all.

She escapes into the land of fantasy. In her dreams, Sari travels into space, meets aliens and makes friends with them. Sometimes she is an alien herself - this is a typical dream of an adopted child that she is, imagining the "real" parents as someone extraordinary.

Sometimes in her dreams, Sari is not an alien but an android built by her dad. This too is her mind trying to explain some things. And while some people would see those dreams as creepy, they are thrilling for Sari. She doesn't see AIs and robots as things. They are created by humans, yes, but they are potentially sentient. Sometimes she thinks of those her father creates as of her real friends – but they are not sentient, not really.

Sari meets her first real human friend when she is in college. The girl is a misfit too, loud, adventurous, disregarding the rules that try to make her into a quiet and obedient daughter of Japanese middle-class patents. She likes loud music and bright colors and Sari, quieter, more focused, is overwhelmed at first, but soon she discovered, how much in common Miko and her have. It’s a little as if they missed each other for the last years and had now found each other to make them complete. They just fit and Sari’s insight balances Miko’s fearlessness, and they both have dreams, oh, so many dreams they share! Their dreams of meeting aliens and have space adventures are so much similar is astonishing, so they end spending lots of time creating stories just for themselves. Somehow they never stopped to believe this is within their reach and sometimes they discuss those scenarios not as fantasies, but as real plans.

"I'll build us a ship," Sari says. "And we will travel together, the three of us"

The third should be the ship themselves of course, always a part of their adventures, their equal, because Sari’s dad believes the real, sentient AI is within a reach, so why wouldn’t she?

Then the real aliens came to turn everything upside down.

***

Miko calls, the first real call since she left.

She went to her own space adventure, alone, not as they planned. Sari is a little jelous since she knows already what Miko had was more than she expected. Miko’s name is not in the news, but Sari knows it was her: a human soldier who got caught into a space battle and then got kidnapped. There are many things the media don’t cover and Sari expects those are classified information. She can read between the lines: things happen there on the space station run by the Galactic Council and it all is tied together, the attack and the assassination and the kidnapping, and whatever happened before Miko was returned. And Sari can bet Miko had fun out there.

The first messages Miko sent after returning to Earth were short, far too short and this was unlike Miko, but Sari can read between the lines and she understands Miko is just waiting for the moment they are alone. Classified information is, well, classified and Miko cannot give many details, but she will when they will be safe. So now Sari is going to meet her, in an old military base in Nevada that was always a special place for Miko. This place is supposed to be safe, but just in case Sari makes a quick check using her cellphone, her implant and some hacked drones over the nearby city. It is fairly safe. Sari’s phone and especially the implant are safe – but she turns off the former regardless.

Miko waits outside the base, next to a large off-road car, that looks like something that belonged to the military too. Sari parks her own car turns all the electronic off before she cames to greet her friend. They hug, a long, long time, it is so good, to hold another person, a person, who is really close to Sari, to hold a best friend. Oh, she learned to have other friends over the last few years, but Miko was always special.

Miko’s eyes glow and she starts by repeating what she told Sari over the phone.

„I’ve found our lives! Oh, you have no idea!”

Sari just nods and lets her speak, as they sit on the rock next to the entrance to the base. Miko talks and talks and talks. Of her mission and how she didn't finish her task. Of Marissa Faireborn and of Oluwasegun Pretorius who had never existed. Of the imprisoned warlord. Of the battle and the rescue and the chase and the anomaly and ancient evils. Of Optimus Prime being alive and Megatron being free and of the Decepticon spy, Soundwave and his symbionts, of hot-blooded (blood is obviously a figure of speech) Shatter and of Tsher-Nah and other aliens from Steadfast Progress. Of how you kill an ancient evil and that the Cybertronians understand sexuality - "intimate interfacing". Of how it is to be a hostage, only not really and that she lied to the general and how she let Megatron escape and that she will find him and kill him if she was wrong, but for now she trusts Optimus Prime, with her life, with the fate of the galaxy.

And then she explains how parallel universes work and that what they both dreamt of were their lives in other realities.

"We don't have to let it go, Sari '' Miko explains and while she does that, she holds Sari's hands, her finger warm and strong and trembling with excitement. "Let us go! Let us leave Earth! We will see other planets! We will have adventures we should always have!"

And Sari nods, because, yes, they had been preparing for this all their lives: Miko's training and Sari's implants, and every plan they ever had had, and yes, they can do it and they will do it.

She smiles and Miko smiles and suddenly Sari feels the urge to kiss her friend, to mark the new stage of their lives this way.

She does it and it is brief, lips brushing against her friend’s lips, heart fluttering in her chest with embarrassment and fear – because with this impulse she might just have destroyed everything, the plans and even their friendship, and Miko’s friendship is more important for Sari than everything in the world.

She waits for the world to end, but Miko blinks, surprised, and then just smiles and presses their foreheads together.

Everything is all right now, and even if they are still out of place, they are going to make it better. They are going to make their lives great. There is no more waiting. The aliens didn’t come to them, but this won’t stop them, never. They have each other and the whole galaxy waiting for them.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> RealityGlitch and her amazing Sense of Purpose (seriously people, go read it!) gave me the inspiration for the "Two queer girls and a sentient spaceship" plot bunny. The real plotline is in development (as is the identity of the spaceship, obviously...) but the idea just couldn't leave my head so it is an introduction, sort of.
> 
> This is also the first of the planned Femslash February stories. The second one (a Dragon Age fic) will be published later this month


End file.
